Laura Brandao on taking a prominent leadership role at MLB Residential Lending

Laura Brandao announced on social media this week that she’s embarking on a new professional endeavor at MLB Residential Lending as its president of wholesale and correspondent lending.

In a conversation with HousingWire, Brandao said that she’d been in a consultant’s role for MLB — which stands for Making Lives Better — since March 2025. She’s had a working relationship with MLB president and CEO Sam Lamparello going back to 2005.

Brandao discussed her transition from consulting to becoming the owner and president of MLB; the significance of attitude and a servant mindset in attracting and retaining top talent for her team; and her optimism about the future of wholesale lending in 2026.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Sarah Wolak: You started consulting for MLB in March. How did that develop into a position and ownership of MLB?

Laura Brandao: Sam, the CEO and major shareholder of MLB, I worked for him in 2005 as a young operations leader, and that was the place where I learned wholesale. Like, before that moment, I had worked in retail, so I had only known retail.

That period of time was when there was a lot of subprime lending, and by 2007, when everything started to crash, I got very nervous about the amount of subprime loans everybody was doing. I mean, we all were very nervous about it.

So I reached out to an account executive and asked if there was anywhere that might be safe, which is how I then became employee No. 1 and the person who built wholesale at American Financial Resources (AFR). But I learned how to do wholesale from Sam Lamparello.

After AFR, I went into consulting. One day, I was out in California for a client, and my cell phone rang. It was Sam and he said, ‘Laura, obviously, you’ve grown up a lot in 20 years. You certainly learned a lot of stuff and did some good things, and I see you’re consulting, how would you like to have a conversation?’ We jumped on a call and he said, ‘Listen, my heart is in wholesale … and I would love for you to come and tell us how to make things better, create systems and make it so that we’re a well-oiled machine.’

So I joined. After a few months, Sam was like, ‘Laura, maybe we should turn this into something bigger.’ And I said, ‘To be honest, I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. I would like us to really be ready. I really want us to have a strong foundation. I want to have operations dialed in.’

I wanted to have a CRM that uses AI and helps the account executives be able to work smart instead of hard. I want to make sure I’ve got my marketing dialed in. I want to make sure I have programs that differentiate us, that make us unique. So we worked toward that and made my position official on Jan. 5, 2026.

Wolak: I know this is a jam-packed question, but how has your role shifted from consultant and board adviser, as they called you, to what you’re doing now? What are your responsibilities?

Brandao: It’s completely different — and it’s a different perspective. When you’re a consultant, you’re looking at it from an outside view. When you are the president of a company, or whatever position you hold, you have an inside view.

One of the first things I did on Monday was to send a message to the entire company. I said, ‘Guys, I want to tell you that I believe in the highest level of communication transparency, and I will overcommunicate with all of you, to the fact that every morning, you’re going to walk into an email from me.’ That email is going to include where we are, how many loans we got in yesterday, how many families we helped and, of course, our goal to hit by Dec. 31, 2026.

I also said my emails will have a reflection. We reflect on yesterday. When team members do something, we need to share that with the entire company. I created this thing called ‘remarkable awards’ so that every day, we can nominate people internally.

Some of the things that have changed now that I’m president is that I’ve set ground rules: cameras on at all times, effective meetings, and if you don’t come prepared to the meeting, you’re asked to leave. Time is money. Time is valuable. Time must be efficient and effective. These are the rules we’re all going to play by.

Wolak: Considering that you’ve set high goals to accomplish in 2026, what strategies are you and the company using to attract top talent and keep top producers who will carry out the mission of MLB?

Brandao: I’ve had the pleasure of being in this industry for a long time. When I built my first wholesale lender, I didn’t know anything. I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants and trying to figure out how to put fires out.

That’s not the way things are anymore. And I have learned very much that who you do business with is much more valuable than how you do business. I know the type of people that fit into our ‘Making Lives Better’ mission. And I can tell you that there are a lot of people in the industry that fit and there are also a lot of people that don’t fit.

For me, it is very important to me to make sure that it’s not the resume, it’s not necessarily the experience level, but rather it’s your attitude, your heart and leading with a servant mindset. I can teach you how to process a loan or underwrite a loan, but I can’t teach you that feeling of wanting to serve our clients, our brokers and our correspondent lenders, and understanding their families.

I believe in elevating at all times. Everyone’s different. If I hire you as an account manager, I will say to you, ‘Where do you want to go now?’ If you tell me that you want to be a VA underwriter, because you’re a veteran, I’m going to say, ‘OK, we’re going to get a road map of what you need to get to the next level.’ If you’re a salesperson, I want you to far exceed any income level that you have ever reached. Let’s go higher.

Wolak: You said that you wanted to get a better CRM and better technology for loan officers before you joined the MLB team. What are these creative strategies and technologies that you’re using to influence growth in the wholesale channel and for the betterment of your team?

Brandao: CRM was definitely No. 1 on my list, because as soon as I arrived, the team told me they didn’t have a CRM. So I reached out on LinkedIn to one of my former broker clients who started his own company, building a CRM. I asked if he could help me to build something in the wholesale space.

In six months, he had built a CRM from scratch. Not only did they customize the CRM specifically for the wholesale space, but they also created a custom broker approval portal. The second thing I did for the underwriting side was to partner with a company for tech to run every single new file through AI so that the underwriter has it after it’s already been reviewed.

In addition to that, one of the struggles that we had at one point was condo reviews. They were very cumbersome; the system just didn’t flow right and it was really choppy. We found a wonderful partner that has a beautiful AI system that, again, sped things up, made it efficient and cost-effective, and now we have a nice, streamlined process flow.

We rolled out, I think, five or six new products. Some of them are exclusive products because of my contacts in the industry, and other things were just stuff that we expanded on. For example, VA renovation lending. MLB didn’t do VA renovation before, but now we do.

Wolak: What are you excited about most for this role and the year ahead?

Brandao: I have been doing wholesale for a lot of years. I have watched many, many cycles of wholesale — from subprime crashes and brokers pretty much being gone, and then the rise of the broker.

I think wholesale lending is becoming a whole new rising sector in 2026 and beyond. I absolutely believe it is a wonderful space to be in. I think the brokers are so resilient and they know what they’re doing. They understand the value of partnership. They understand the value of having options, independence and the ability to make the best choices for the families that they’re serving and the partners that they’re working with.